Sponsors and volunteers of Initiative 1639 were celebrating Friday, having with record speed secured a place on the November ballot for a gun safety initiative with provisions on which the Legislature failed to act.

"Don't blink because we just made history, 375k in three weeks," I-1639's young campaign manager Stephen Paolini wrote on his Facebook page.

The initiative needed 259,000 valid voter signatures, but was delayed getting into the field when gun rights supporters challenged its ballot title.

But the 375,000 names, collected by paid and unpaid signature gatherers, provides far more than the cushion needed. Two gun lobby groups tried a second legal challenge last week, claiming print on initiative petitions was impossible to read, but were rebuffed by the Washington State Supreme Court.

For the third time in five years, Washington voters will have the opportunity to go where the Legislature feared to tread.

The Legislature stalled in 2014 when asked to close the "gun show loophole." Voters in November, by a 59-41 percent margin, enacted I-594, requiring criminal background checks for those purchasing firearms online or at gun shows.

Not even appeals by parents, law enforcement and a high profile massacre victim, ex-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, could persuade lawmakers to enact extreme risk protection orders allowing judges to take guns from those posing a danger to themselves and those around them.

The voters did it by passing Initiative 1491 in 2016, by a 69-31 percent margin.

The Legislature stalled out again in 2018, despite massacres at a Parkland, Fla., high school and a Texas church.

I-1639 would raise from 18 to 21 the minimum age for purchasing a semi-automatic assault weapon. It would require a 10-day waiting period for those purchasing such weapons. It would enhance background checks, so assault weapons purchasers undergo the same scrutiny as those buying handguns.

The initiative also encourages secure storage of weapons, making the owner legally responsible if a child obtains a weapon not safely stored and injures self or others.

The effort to pass additional gun safety legislation has been fueled by families of victims, victims themselves and schoolmates. Hundreds of Franklin High School students demonstrated last month after a senior at the school was shot to death in a lakefront park.

"The gunman who shot my son was 19 years old: If I-1639 had been in place in 2016, he would not have been able to purchase the semi-automatic assault rifle that allowed him to injure my son and kill three of his close friends," Kramer said Friday.

Ola Jackson, a Rainier Beach High School student and campaign volunteer, added: "We have to take action to prevent gun violence, and if the Gun Lobby keeps buying out our politicians, we'll do it ourselves."

I-1639 presents the gun lobby with a dilemma. Dare it fight the initiative, with the likelihood it will be outgunned?

Ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been a generous donor. So has Connie Ballmer, wife of the LA Clippers owner. Zumiez co-founder Tom Campion and spouse Sonya also been major givers.

Twenty-one years ago, the National Rifle Association was able to spend millions, and rout an initially favored initiative that would have required safe storage of firearms, and that owners take a gun safety course.

Those days are over.

And the Legislature may yet wake up and smell the gunpowder.

"In today's political era, the fact that the Legislature remains virtually impotent on gun safety compared to the overwhelming majority of citizens is an embarrassing disconnect of democracy," State Sen. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, said earlier this week.

(SeattlePI.com blogger/columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at joelconnelly@seattlepi.com)

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politics for the P-I since 1973.